14 AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION 



The milk, butter, and cheese districts in Cheshire, 

 Derbyshire, and in the Melton division of Leicestershire, 

 have fairly weathered the times, though prices have 

 fallen heavily for cheese, and about 20 per cent, for milk. 

 Professor Sheldon says of these North Midland districts 

 that twenty-five years ago farmers were making good 

 profits, now they are just paying their way. Here, as in 

 all the dairy and stock-feeding counties, the low price 

 of imported grain and feeding-stuffs has helped some 

 farmers, while it has been ruin to others. There is in 

 these districts an active competition for all farms in fair 

 condition, and no difficulty in letting land, at any rate 

 for dairy farming. 



In Yorkshire it took the porous, shallow soils of the 

 wolds six years to recover from the " washing out " of 

 their fertility in 1879. The depletion of capital thinned 

 the stock and impoverished the land, but the main body 

 of farmers managed to hold on, and the last three years 

 have not been as unfavourable in Yorkshire as further 

 south.^ But the enormous fall in the price of wool has 

 crippled these sheep-breeding lands, meaning by itself a 

 loss of I OS an acre. The career of the heavy clay land 

 in the Darlington and Cleveland districts was much the 

 same as in other counties. A large proportion went out 

 of cultivation before 1885, and much of it has fallen two- 

 thirds in value, and where, as is not infrequent, redrain- 

 ing is necessary the clays cannot be let at all. On the 

 mixed soil the depression has been only less marked. 

 Where there has been " a fair proportion of old grass 

 things have been helped by sheep breeding." Till the 

 exceptional drop in the prices of sheep and lambs in 

 1 89 1 and 1892, the pastoral farms in the Yorkshire dales 

 did well. On the whole, though there have been heavy 

 losses to all classes concerned with the land, the high 

 standard of cultivation has been kept up, and grass land 

 shows signs of liberal treatment, and there is a keen 

 competition for farms in fair condition, and no farms are 

 derelict. 



Mr S. Rowlandson, in the Darlington district, states 



' Pringle, Yorkshire, p. 9. 



